talkmagic.co.uk

I agree!!

While I don't condone exposure, there's not a lot I can do to stop it. All that I do is improve my own skills and work on my performance. Usually that is enough for hecklers claiming to know the secrets.

If someone says "that's easy all your doing is controlling the card to the top, I read about this on the internet". Then I'll control the card 3 from top and show the bottom and top few cards.

With enough skill, practise and performance generally I can get away with mosts things even with all this exposure about.

On the Copperfield flying illusion.
It blew me away when i first saw it but i saw the explanation a few days later and i was"Oh great,strings"
Revealing a secret gets the magic out of magic...
I myself when i see a trick that is really well performed i usually dont ask the explanation,i have much more fun trying to work it out on my own...
I believe if a trick or illusion is very well performed much of its effect strikes the spectator after the trick is finished,"the card just flew! there must be wires! but he passed it thru a ring... And if the trick is really good they will be thinking about it for days...

So if you reveal your secrets people will recognise you as person with very fast hands,or secret mechanisms.

Lets not forget that the purpose in magic is to entertain,not to show a quick puzzle.

i think all magic effects should be exposed within seconds of them going on sale or created...that way, no one would ever buy anything, everyone would have access to the "answers" and made to feel clever just for a brief while...

then the slow realisation that anyone has access to the same answers, and therefore makes everyone back on the same level again...

and outside every magic show, should be people with pamphlets saying "it's all damned filthy lies...all of it..."

the real reason why you should keep the mechanics a secret is simple...its not about being made to look clever, its not about being one up on everyone else

...its about making the audiences happy...partly by making sure no one knows the mechanics of it...simple...

the magician guards an empty box...

What about those people who come to the show just to prove there is no such thing as magic?They know the magician is getting credit for some
trickery by not an actual skill.(not me i give kudos to every good sleight of hand artist)But that can bring up another question:Are we entertaining or being ridiculed?Because i bet it will take years for me to find a believer in magic(except for children),everyone know that magic is not real and yet they still come to shows...
Magic is all about being able to make the audience believe more and very few magicians can do that...
Because when people clap they are clapping for your ability to fool them,they know they are being fooled, they only like it because of the way the magician presents these things and they acknolege that ability but in the other side of theyr mind they still know theyve been fooled.
So if you reveal your secrets you are making the spectators mind up that the only skill you have is fast hands...thus making the not like you...
thats my opinion at least

I've but made a scant look at this thread in that I'm more or less aware as to how most will reply but I want to offer what might be a more "unique" point of view based on a word used in the title question here -- "Sacred"

There was a time that magicians not only went to their grave defending secrets (thank you Inquisition) but when "Master" would kill a student if the student divulged things. Magic, whether it be that of the theater or the secrets residing within the more esoteric realms of religion, science, and even technology today, has always been a world in which access to the secrets was reserved for those that proved themselves worthy vs. those that were cunning enough to steal it or wealthy enough to buy it from a traitor.

If you were working in the R&D department of one of the big Pharmaceutical Companies and part of a major breakthrough and in your innocent excitement or just plain personal greed you explain the chemical processes involved for replicating whatever this "Magic is" to the competition... well, at minimum your life will be a living hell due to litigation you will soon find yourself swimming in. But, even in today's world the Old Wizards are known to murder those that share the wrong things with the wrong sources.... and yes, what happens in the big business world and protecting corporate secrets or even national military secrets USED TO BE on par with the attitude held in protecting a simple trick... as so many see them today.

Magicians are the worse source it would seem, for keeping secrets and I believe a major reason for that in today's world, is simply due to the convenience we have when it comes to access and too, the attitude we have been trained to have via society, in which there is nothing sacred or anything that shouldn't be shared with the world... this myth that information is "free" and anyone that wants to know should be allowed to know. An idea I agree with on the surface but amend with the more traditional clause of "...once they have proven themselves worthy..."

When my mentor took over the Thurston show from Will Rock there was one single effect he wanted to learn most and after five years and "proving himself" and making the final payment on the collection the old Master taught it to him... it was the very last trick out of several dozen that were far more grand and memorable... the Classic Orange Bowl routine.

For me the one piece in that massive stockpile of magic history that I wanted most to know and learn was the Talking Tea Kettle. Don't get me wrong, I knew the mechanics behind it but I didn't know "the trick"... there's a difference! More to the point, I wasn't taught "the trick" until I'd busted my butt for six or so years and PROVEN myself to the old man... when he finally showed me the thing I threw it across the room it scared me so.

The Moral of the Story Being that Magic is "Sacred", more so to some than others. As we age the "romance" of the craft oft times takes possession of our mind and compounds the idea of reverence and sanctity or more directly RESPECT for the craft and the power it shares with us... lending to us for a brief moment or two in time.

It does matter if people know even the rudimentary elements of how things work at the mechanical level. It matters simply because they aren't supposed to know and our bastardization of that concept means that we have forgotten about those in our past that literally laid down their lives so as to not reveal the workings of the Cups & Balls or a Ball & Vase. I'm not exaggerating, it's right there in the history books if we book look at them and understand what's being said and why. But we are far more obsessed with learning "the trick" vs. learning about magic, what it means and why so many in the past were willing to die rather than reveal our technology with those they did not feel "qualified".

On that truth alone I feel that we all hold an obligation to see what we do as something "sacred" lest that spilt blood would all be in vain and for not.